* Germany cuts armed forces to 175,000
* Will commit more to U.N. missions
By Sabine Siebold
BERLIN, May 12 (Reuters) - Germany plans to reduce the size of its armed forces but will play a bigger role in international missions, its defence minister said on Wednesday, presenting the biggest reform of the Bundeswehr since it was formed in 1955.
Thomas de Maiziere will cut the armed forces by 45,000 to 175,000 members, under a plan to reduce defence spending which also ended obligatory military service. [ID:nLDE66B1MR]
"If wealth requires responsibility, then that is also valid for German security policy," de Maiziere told reporters.
Until the fall of the Berlin Wall in 1989, the Federal Republic shied away from participation in armed conflicts, and foreign deployment of the army was limited to humanitarian aid.
But in the past two decades German soldiers have fought on foreign soil for the first time since World War two in missions to troublespots like Somalia, Kosovo, Congo, and Afghanistan, where Germany now has about 5,000 troops.
Germany is a member of NATO but confounded its partners in March by refusing to join military operations in Libya. Military interventions have been unpopular with the German public.
But de Maiziere said the cutbacks would not reduce German participation in overseas operations. On the contrary, Germany will commit even more troops to U.N. missions in future, even when it had no direct interest in the situation.
"I believe that we should, according to this point of view, assess requests for such operations," said de Maiziere.
De Maiziere's predecessor, Karl-Theodor zu Guttenberg, said before he resigned in March over a plagiarism scandal that the ministry would not be able to reach the initially agreed defence savings goal of 8.3 billion euros (${esc.dollar}11.84 billion) by 2014. [ID:nLDE70F0DO]
The opposition Social Democrats (SPD) and Greens cautioned that these savings would be difficult to reach. "The planned savings of 8.3 billion euros were unrealistic from the start," SPD politician Rainer Arnold told Reuters. (Writing by Sam Cage; Editing by Jon Hemming)
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